Thursday, May 19, 2022

Some Deeply-Felt Thanks

 


While there still could be obstacles to restoring the historic Thompson Elk Fountain at its original site, the May 11 decision by the Portland City Council was deeply gratifying to the preservation community.  Kit Abel Hawkins, a vibrant member of the ad hoc Save The Thompson Elk Fountain Committee, wrote eloquent thanks the council members.

Her thoughts were echoed by other committee members who signed below.

 Dear Mayor Wheeler and Commissioners Hardesty, Mapps, Rubio, and Ryan-- 

 I write with gratitude for your finding your way to making something right in this City last Wednesday -- your withdrawal of the Demolition Delay Permit that would have stripped the Thompson Elk Fountain of its City Historic Landmark protections and your unanimous commitment to its full restoration.  Your action will serve as a symbol not only of your further intentions but of your coming actions in bringing the city that is our home back from the combined destructive forces that have plagued us for the last many months.

 It took listening and courage, coordination and time, imagination and effort to make this happen.  I am grateful that Commissioner Ryan was willing to be the first to step forward to boldly assert his support of the return of this landmark. I am thankful for all your collective openness to an idea that was becoming lost in a sea of process and options that combined would have  put the City in league with the vandals. Thanks go to Commissioner Rubio and Commissioner Ryan for introducing the Resolution, and for the introduction of good humor into the proceedings with the declarations of intent signified by those green antlers on your monitors and then on your heads. Thanks go to Commissioner Mapps for a history of the artwork that has stood at the center of Portland's civic center for 120 years. Thanks go to Commissioner Hardesty, who might have preferred a straighter road, quite literally, as PBOT bureau chief, but who found the virtue in this resolution supporting restoration. And thanks go to Mayor Wheeler for his outspoken grasp of the simple fact that the City should return the landmark to its site as an example of the City's devotion to stewardship of its resources on behalf of its citizens. 

 As was testified to at the hearing, we are here to help. Bill and I and the other members of the  Board of Restore the Thompson Elk Fountain stand ready to raise funds from the thousands who lifted their voices on behalf of the rightness of this restoration. The People of Portland wrote to let you know their opinion on this matter, and we hope to encourage them to add to a fund to see to it that the missing and damaged parts of the Thompson Elk Fountain are refabricated and given to the City for the complete and beautifully crafted restoration of this landmark artwork.  Preliminary drawings and plans have already been created, stonemasons found who see the work as completely feasible using precisely the same granite from which the intact portions of the fountain are made. Bill is having a model made so that one and all can visualize just how this cleverly and artfully conceived structure can be reassembled.

 Perhaps even beyond the particulars of this symbolic and reassuring moment, we are most pleased to have been considered as advocates whose ideas are worthy of consideration and whose commitment to honorable engagement resulted in a sense of optimism about the possibility that we can confront our problems as a city with common purpose, resolve, and effort.

Gratefully yours,  

Kit Abel Hawkins

William J. Hawkins, III

Stephen Kafoury

Mike Lindberg

Fred Leeson

Jim Heuer

Brooke Best

Rod Merrick

Henry Kunowski

Wendy Rahm

---- Join Building on History's email list by writing "add me" to fredleeson@hotmail.com

3 comments:

  1. While forgiveness is a wonderful trait for any human being, I can't help but think how better balanced it would be if those so-called citizens who wantonly vandalized this civic monuments would acknowledge their culpability. Sadly, Portland has done little but kowtow to these aggressive miscreants. Why are Portlanders so afraid of them? My only conclusion is that they bewitch many of us with their brazen contempt for beauty and law. Maybe it's their insane anarchism that make us quake before them. I wish we were made of sturdier material like those founding fathers who understood how crucial the rule of law is to civilization itself. But Portland's mad rush to exonerate these criminals seems like a disease devouring us from within. Maybe we should count ourselves lucky if they don't quickly repeat their outrageous behavior. After all, how would we know since there's apparently no accountability in this city for those who dominate cowardly citizens with wanton lawbreaking.

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    2. The story of the damage to the Thompson Elk Fountain is much more complex than the narrative that angry demonstrators destroyed it. In fact, the most that happened to the bronze elk itself was spray paint. It was never pulled down or physically altered by the demonstrators. What did happen, that caused much damage, was first the building of a fire in the fountain basin. No doubt the demonstrators expected that a fire in a stone basin wouldn't hurt anything. But the basin was made of a granite that, like most granite varieties, will crack when heated to the point where minute inclusions of water expand and rupture the stone. Several of the large basin blocks were fractured by the heat.

      It was then that the City of Portland brought in contractors to dismantle the fountain and statue and move it to storage, but in the second injury to the Fountain, they contributed to the damage by smashing the four horse watering troughs in the process of clearing the site. Fortunately, alert friends of the monument had already made detailed measurements of the troughs and other parts, so that restoration is feasible.

      There is no doubt that vandalism and gratuitous violence both by demonstrators and police in a vicious circle of escalation did grievous damage to our downtown in 2020 and into 2021, but the injuries to the Thompson Elk Fountain were partly inadvertent by the demonstrators and partly deliberate by the City of Portland itself.

      Let's be glad that a spirit of cooperation to solve tough problems has taken hold, if at least in a narrow degree, to get the Thompson Elk Fountain back where it belongs to show that we as a City and community can start putting the pieces back together again to make the great city it can be when we all pull together.

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